Jaguar

One of the wonderful things about Better in Belize is that you might actually see a wild jaguar on your walk early some morning or just before dark.  This gives an extra bit of spice to living here that is cherished by most – although it gives others the jitters. Two miles down the road at Martz Farm, a jaguar visited a thatched hut, checked out a sleeping Belizean, then walked across the kitchen and jumped out the window. So they’re not automatically searching you out to eat you, but you still need to be properly respectful of the possibilities.

The jaguar is the third-largest cat in the world, related to tigers, lions, and leopards. It roars, but can’t purr. The only other big cat in the new world is the puma which can purr but can’t roar.  Listen to a jaguar’s roar here  then listen from your jungle bed at night.

I’m sorry to say I’ve never heard one, although its preferred habitat is moist green forests like those all around us here. They’re also found in lots of other habitats, even the deserts of Mexico and sometimes up into New Mexico (only two have been spotted there so far) and range as far south as Argentina.

The name “jaguar” is actually iaguara, (yah-‘gwar-uh) from a Brazilian native language, but Belizeans know the jaguar as “tigre” (tee-gray), and the tigre played a major role in the mythology of the ancient Mayans. All major Mesoamerican civilizations revered jaguar gods. You can read about it here. 

The jaguar enjoys swimming, and plays an important role in stabilizing ecosystems and regulating prey populations.  Its irregular black-dotted rosettes make excellent camouflage in dappled forest lighting, enabling it to successfully stalk and ambush its prey – birds, deer, armadillos, turtles, fish, peccaries, porcupines, tapirs, capybaras, anacondas, caimans, and so on, through a list of at least 85 species. Some jaguars have a melanistic gene which renders their coat black, with the rosettes even blacker and visible only in certain lighting. These are the “black panthers” of legend, but except for their color they are identical to normally marked jaguars. Here’s some nice footage of these sleek and beautiful big cats. 

The image above is a photo of the jaguar painted life-size on the wall at the entry to my house. Maybe someday I’ll see a wild one in real life.